The Video Game Critic

HTC Vive

HTC Vive

Posted: October 31st, 2017, 6:54 am

by GameOfThrones

One of my friends got one. For the first time since the Jaguar gen I got to try out VR. It has come such a long way. I was totally blown away by it. Jaw droppingly superb.I play Lab which was like being in the lab in half life 2. Totally awesome.

A beatem up called Gorn. I was not very good at it but it was a lot of fun.

I also played a defuse the bomb game which worked really well.

You can only play it for about 10 minutes before it becomes really intense. I found myself trying to put my arm on the desk. Though I picked up a note pad and was like wow.

If they can get the software for it, it will be amazing.

Has anyone else tried the new VR? I hear the occulus is low res. Has anyone tried the playstation one?

Re: HTC Vive

Posted: October 31st, 2017, 10:58 am

by Sut

I’m really interested in the PS VR it’s just to expensive for me to drop yet.

Re: HTC Vive

Posted: October 31st, 2017, 3:26 pm

by Retro STrife

From everything I've read, the HTC Vive is the best technology of the three. Meanwhile, the PS VR is the cheapest and most accessible of the three, since you can run it off your PS4 rather than needing a high-powered PC. I only recently learned that you need a PC to run the Vive and Oculus (maybe it's an obvious thing, but the console gamer in me thought it was all self-contained in the head unit).... so you can't just look at the price of the Vive or Oculus--you also have to consider if you need to pay to upgrade your PC to run them.

I tried the HTC Vive about a month ago. There's a pay-to-play VR place near where I live, so I paid an hourly fee to try it. I was with friends, so I only played about 15 minutes. I came away really impressed. All the games are essentially tech demos at this point, so I didn't play anything that would hold my attention for more than an hour or so, but it was definitely the most immersive gaming experience I've ever played. You really do feel like you're in the VR world. I didn't experience any motion sickness, which was one of my concerns (although, again, I didn't play long). Despite that, the biggest obstacle for VR is the inability to do movement. The games I played mostly involved standing in place.. for example, I played a couple FPS games where you stand in one spot and shot at enemies while they come toward you. You can't just walk around a VR world, due to the limited space in your living room (and they say using a joystick doesn't work, because that movement causes motion sickness), so that's the biggest issue so far.

About 7 years ago, I got to try a VR lab at an Ivy League university in my area. That university's VR lab was designed for research purposes rather than gaming. It was an amazing experience, but the tech was outdated at that time (the graphics looked like 90s PC graphics). Still, it was cool back then to try something that wasn't available to consumers. But now, the stuff they're doing on the Vive blows that experience away. One difference, though, is that the university VR Lab had a 40' x 40' room, so you could walk all over the place. Even with that size space, the gameplay options were limited, so the movement issues and lack of space have always been an issue with VR and might always be.